Good morning – 

They’re baaaaaaaaack... Or, as Gideon Tucker once wrote: “No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Tuesday, January 12, 2021
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• The 87th Session of the Texas Legislature gavels in at 12 noon today.
   
• They arrive in town facing a billion-dollar budget shortfall and the economic uncertainties of what the incoming Biden Administration will mean for Texans. For Republican lawmakers, they have to decide if they will finally allow movement on long-squelched party initiatives – like enacting election integrity reform, imposing spending limits, allowing constitutional carry, and banning taxpayer-funded lobbying.
   
• Among other things, legislators are facing heavy pressure from grassroots activists to restrict the abusive powers that the governor and local executives have assigned to themselves during the 2020 Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
     
• And, on top of that, the GOP-dominated legislature must decide if they will continue allowing Gov. Greg Abbott to put millions of corporate welfare dollars into the same Big Tech companies engaging in scorched-earth censorship of conservatives.

• Speaking of election integrity, Erin Anderson previews the coming legislative fight around the unresolved legal issues surrounding Texas’ election rules. Specifically, Republican lawmakers are expected to address these voting issues with measures to strengthen ballot security laws and block Democrats’ efforts to lock in rule changes through court action.
   
• Iris Poole reports State Rep. Mayes Middleton (R–Wallisville) has filed two election integrity bills aimed at preventing voter fraud and ensuring only legally qualified citizens are voting in Texas elections. 
   
• “Texas must lead the way on this issue. We cannot become like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, or Georgia. I will fight to ensure that Texas has secure elections.” – State Rep. Middleton

• Don’t know who your legislators are? Check out the new Texas Directory! Find your legislators, check their ratings with civic groups, and see what’s been reported about them.

• Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced yesterday Texas lawmakers face a billion-dollar shortfall in the current 2020-2021 biennial budget. Brandon Waltens has the details.
      
• That’s a tamer beast than what Hegar was projecting last summer. He warned at the time a $4.6 billion revenue shortfall could be possible. 
   
• The shortfall, of course, came about because of the government-ordered shutdown of the state economy by Gov. Abbott.
     

• In addition to announcing the immediate shortfall, Hegar said yesterday that the state would have $112.5 billion in revenue available for general-purpose spending during the coming 2022-23 biennium. That represents a 0.4 percent decrease from what was available ahead of the previous biennium.

• Despite Republican control of the Texas House, Democrats will once again be given chairmanships to House committees. State Rep. Dade Phelan (R–Beaumont), the presumptive House speaker, made the admission during an interview with the liberal Texas Tribune.

      

• Phelan praised the bipartisan nature of politics inside the Texas Capitol, saying it is a model that works “pretty darn well” and is not always about “Republican versus Democrat” or “left versus right.”

     
• That led former State Rep. Matt Rinaldi (R-Irving) to observe: "Democrats are trying to have Texas Republicans in Congress arrested and put on [the] no fly list and Republicans are handing out committee chairmanships to them. And you wonder why the GOP can’t turn out voters."

READER SURVEY!

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